Item HT 56310 Card - Lindsay Motherwell, Musicians Union of Australia, Melbourne, 1964

Summary

Small pink cardboard membership card for the Musicians Union of Australia in a plastic holder, with three of four quarters paid for 1964. The receipt of payment is also in the case. Lindsay Motherwell was a drummer in various jazz bands, and a member of the Musicians Union of Australia from the 1940s until at least the 1970s.

Sylvia Boyes (a South African-born orphan) and Lindsay Motherwell (a Melbourne-born drummer) met in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967 through their theatre connections. They fell in love but due to apartheid laws were forced to leave South Africa to marry in London. They subsequently relocated permanently to Melbourne in 1970.

Physical Description

Pink cardboard membership card in a plastic case. First, second and third quarters marked off as having been paid. Also in plastic case is a yellow receipt for payment of 10 pounds on 18/5/1964.

Significance

Statement of Historical Significance:
This collection provides a significant opportunity to represent political and personal freedom as a motivation for migrating to Australia within the international context of both apartheid in South Africa and the end of the White Australia policy in Australia. The personal narrative is well documented and the objects provide a material way to follow the lives of both Lindsay and Sylvia, both separately and where they coincide in South Africa and onwards together to Melbourne. While this is ultimately a love story, it plays out through the collection against the backdrop of apartheid South Africa, sixties London and an increasingly multicultural Australia.